Bengali

Bangla Language and Literature

Bengali literature developed in the northeastern part of the Indian subcontinent in about the fourteenth century, when Bengali, also called Bangla, became a literary language. It is often claimed that Muslim patronage ushered Bengali poetry into being. There is little evidence of such courtly literature before the sixteenth century. Before the elaboration of an Islamic literature, the works of Hindu poets contained elements reflecting aspects of Islam in the regional culture, such as references to the sultan of the time or to characters inspired by stories from the early history of Islam.